top chef

When you watch reality TV, do you not so secretly think of your favorite persona, “If we met, we would become best friends! I just know it!”? Well, that’s just creepy. Contain yourself. But, if you’re a regular watcher of popular (and grounded) reality programs like Bravo’s Top Chef, consider sidling up to past fan favorites from the show while on a vacation. A cruise vacation.

The sweet-centric Top Chef spinoff, Top Chef Just Desserts is in its fourth week—and while one of the SF cheftestants has already gotten the ax, Yigit Pura, the Turkish-born pastry chef at Taste Catering, is still in the running. The show airs each Wednesday at 10 p.m. Tune in to root for the home team.

Padma Lakshmi stopped by Neiman Marcus in San Francisco to talk jewelry – from her latest Padma collection featuring delicate gold Indian-inspired designs with a modern twist to the pieces that every woman should invest in. And of course, what interview with the Top Chef goddess would be complete without a little food talk:

Welcome to our exciting new partnership with Eater. For this weekly Friday column, Eater editor Paolo Lucchesi gives his opinionated report on all the restaurant news that's fit to print...and then some.

As the second part of our series of guest food bloggers (Jamie Lauren being our first), 7x7 welcomes food stylist Katie Christ. Katie worked as Culinary Producer for the first season of Top Chef and in 2008, she won the first ever Food Network Challenge for food stylists. Tune in to get a taste of Katie’s inspirations as she eats and drinks her way through our fair city.

Being a chef, people are constantly surprised by what I eat (or don't eat) over the course of my work week ... to be completely honest, the last thing Iwant to do when I am at work is eat. Being surrounded by food all the time generally makes me very uninterested in having a meal on a daily basis. Here's a list of everything I ate this week.

Monday: My day off. Probably the one day when I actually eat two meals. Usually on Mondays I try and get together with friends, since it's really

Welcome to our exciting new partnership with Eater. For this weekly Friday column, log on to get editor Paolo Lucchesi's opinionated reports on all the latest restaurant news that's fit to print, including chef gossip, Bauer-isms, Top Chef updates and unidentified flying donuts.

I obviously go out to eat a fair amount. If you have been following my blogs, you will know that I am not a big fan of cooking at home in my downtime and usually prefer to have someone else do it for me. This week I amuse you, the reader, with a list of my pet peeves about diningout. I'm not going to name names, because that would be rude, but here are some things that I consider to be simply unacceptable.

How my life has changed since I started appearing on national television:

Until I got a spot on this season’s Top Chef, my job at Absinthe has always been behind the scenes. For the past year and a half, I’ve been going into work and prepping, cooking, expediting and hand-holding for about 10 to 12 hours a day (on average) before heading home.